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Is This Art ? Lyrics

Artist: The Levellers
Album: Levellers

They took me to the battlefield
Saw the mushroom clouds
Said 'I can see the colours
Even when my head is bowed'
And they showed me the destruction
The slaughter a la carte
And isn't nature wonderful
But is this art?

They took me to the hospital
And pulled aside the sheet
Said 'Look at that pulsating.
Just listen to the beat'
And they showed me the incision
Then took away the heart
And isn't nature wonderful
But is this art?

They took me to the scientist,
Who opened up a phial
He said 'This is only chicken pox
And rhino bile'
And they showed me what it did to mice
They said 'This is just the start'
And isn't nature wonderful
But is this art?

They took me to the tenement
And kicked down the door
They said:'Have you seen the copulation,
Practised by the poor
We select the ones to breed
Then we reject the part'
And isn't nature wonderful
But is this art?

Comments/Interpretations

by rosie posie on 2/13/2009 12:20pm
i love tis song it has such meaning

by rosie posie on 2/13/2009 12:21pm
i love this song soo much it has such meaning full
lyrics, and look at what we havedone to the world...

by Tammy on 6/8/2010 6:27am
Yeah we have but to quote another levellers song, "Don't worry now the world's gonna be alright,
Cos the land has been here longer than the likes of you and I"

by Wildman on 5/16/2011 4:54pm
i climb on Portland and these lyrics come to mind often

by Casteaux on 5/8/2014 11:05am
Great song, i just love it

by Bob Leslie on 9/22/2015 5:53am
This bears a more than uncanny resemblance to a poem written in the 1960s by Scottish poet Alan Jackson. Has he been given a co-writing credit?

by farrochie on 10/25/2015 12:01pm
Bob, I think the poem was written by Pete Morgan, who lived at the time in Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire. I have his book of poems "The grey mare being the better steed" in which the poem appears.

by Alan Jackson on 3/5/2018 5:58pm
The poem was written by Pete Morgan. I published a couple of small books by Pete with my Kevin Press, For a few years Pete and I did readings together all over Britain. I would look over from the passenger seat of his Morris Minor at Pete with long blond hair over his shoulder and think: Bloody hell! I'm travelling with a Viking/'

by Hildavera on 6/2/2020 4:28am
I remember reading the poem that this was based on as a child. It has always annoyed me that I couldn’t find any credit to the original poet, so I’m really pleased to see Pete Morgan’s name here.

Many thanks to Alan Jackson too for confirming Pete’s authorship (I have seen a claim online that Simon Friend wrote the lyrics to this song while still at school, which may be the case but it is still lifted from Pete’s poem!)